Artist’s Statement

Society now recognizes the importance of depicting and including people of every color and culture, gender and sexual orientation- from all walks of life. This validates their existence, part of an ongoing conversation/evolution that is our society.
From the beginning of my career 40 years ago, I knew this, each exhibition has included a diverse array of humanity because to me this was fair, social equality, a complete and well rounded conversation. Seeing is believing and sooner or later it becomes real. Creating a sense of community within my work in order to show what might be possible in the world has been the umbrella under which the strength of character and fragility of the human spirit play out, the heroics of everyday life. Often the people I paint are immersed in a task with singular focus, harvesting fruit, reading ,sewing or gazing out, inviting the viewer in. The figures may be surrounded by flora and fauna evoking the beauty and bounty of the world and a rich inner life. My youth was spent in the San Joaquin Valley and Moreno Valley of California at a time when fruit and vegetable boycotts by The United Farm Workers Union led by Cesar Chavez were all important to the economy so social and economic justice were central issues and became an ever present current in my life and work. I was surrounded by people from all over the world, their customs, languages and the vivid color that often surrounded festivities were spellbinding.
Oil paint was the first medium I found that enabled me to express the feelings and ideas that made me an artist. But for each exhibition I introduce a medium new to my practice. Examples are: portraits made from torn photo collage, embroidery using cotton floss, wool, glass beads, mosaic glass, plate glass, clay, ceramics, wood block prints, linocuts, lithographs and mono prints, pencil and ink drawings to name a few... through these I am able to express other avenues of human emotion. Over the last ten years my bodies of work and exhibitions are divided in three or four parts: paintings in oil, embroidered fiber and glass work, mosaic and etched glass artwork and woodblock prints. Working in diverse mediums has allowed me to keep a fresh and playful atmosphere in my studio while investigating and exploring, each year different creatively from the one before.